Posted
by
Soulskillon Thursday July 24, 2014 @11:38AM
from the year-of-linux-on-the-gamebox dept.

For years, Good Old Games has made a business out of selling classic PC game titles completely free of DRM. Today they announced that their platform now supports Linux. They said,
We've put much time and effort into this project and now we've found ourselves with over 50 titles, classic and new, prepared for distribution, site infrastructure ready, support team trained and standing by ... We're still aiming to have at least 100 Linux games in the coming months, but we've decided not to delay the launch just for the sake of having a nice-looking number to show off to the press. ... Note that we've got many classic titles coming officially to Linux for the very first time, thanks to the custom builds prepared by our dedicated team of penguin tamers. ... For both native Linux versions, as well as special builds prepared by our team, GOG.com will provide distro-independent tar.gz archives and support convenient DEB installers for the two most popular Linux distributions: Ubuntu and Mint, in their current and future LTS editions.

They have big all-in-one installer.exes that setup a full environment for the games.

A great many are run through dosbox, but others are old win95 games or whatever.

We're talking about a month-long project for a couple developers to convert the low hanging fruit that have an easy deployment target like that. And working out details with more modern indie game studios that natively target linux.

They have big all-in-one installer.exes that setup a full environment for the games.

This. I bought the Kyrandia series about a month ago, and after faffing around with WINE to extract the games - which was not fun because it only drew half the installer and I had to guess what it was trying to tell me - I found that they didn't actually include the bloody game program at all, just the data files and a scummvm installation of unknown provenance.

Yes, it does make it easier for someone without a DOS background to get the games up and running, I can't fault them for that. But I would much pr

No offense, but that's a kind of dumb assumption. They explicitly state that they make the games compatible with modern systems. With a large portion of their catalog being 16-bit, and 64-bit OSes not able to load 16-bit apps, they *need* to be wrapping the games in emulators or the like.

Yes, the original game files - or very close, minimally-patched versions - are in there. However, the vast majority of their customer base wouldn't be able to do anything with those game files. Even if they were, it wouldn't be the simple and user-friendly experience that it is today.

Now, as a Linux user trying to run Windows software, you're pretty much writing off "simple and user-friendly" from the get-go (I've been gaming in Wine since 2006; it's better than it was but it's got a long way to go and the goalposts keep moving). Given that, maybe it would have been nice for the small portion of users who care if they'd provided a "here's the files and instructions you need for setting this up in ScummVM on the platform of your choice" option... but that's not their target market, and frankly it might actually be harmful to their goals (never underestimate the cost of support calls from idiots who think they know what they're doing).

Hence, while many of their games have been *able* to run on Linux since GOG released them, the really core portion of the service - the dead-simple installers and updates - didn't. That is what they're now changing.

No offense, but that's a kind of dumb assumption. They explicitly state that they make the games compatible with modern systems. With a large portion of their catalog being 16-bit, and 64-bit OSes not able to load 16-bit apps, they *need* to be wrapping the games in emulators or the like.

Yes, the original game files - or very close, minimally-patched versions - are in there. However, the vast majority of their customer base wouldn't be able to do anything with those game files. Even if they were, it wouldn't be the simple and user-friendly experience that it is today.

Yeah, I appreciate that but I think you may have missed something in my post. I know exactly why they've done what they did and for the majority of cases it's a very good idea. But if you want to play the game in its original format, you are SOL.

Right now, you buy a game - you get a choice of downloading a Windows version or a Mac version. Would it have killed them to have had a third option to download the DOS version of the game? It would be a damn sight smaller than the bloaty thing I had to download

I think you missed his point, his point is the old DOS game is wrapped in a Windows installer that often won't run on the platform he is using and there is NO way to just download the original files WITHOUT the installer which would allow him to trivially get it running in Linux.

While I have never been a fan of Linux I agree that is stupid for multiple reasons, not only does it make his ability to buy and use these games much harder (thus making it more likely he and those on his platform won't buy, thus h

Your snide comment aside: what they discovered is a desire to test the market for circa five dollar legitimate copies of good games with tested and updated DOSBox and/or Wine configurations so that users do not have to Google, tweak and retweak things to get a game to run only to find out three-quarters of the way through the game that it crashes.

I would much rather pay a reasonable amount for that rather than spend my gaming time tinkering; that's good value for me. If I liked tinkering, I wouldn't be their target market though and I might be making snide comments on Slashdot with my time.

Tinkering is all well and good; and many times quite relaxing and enjoyable in it's own right.

If I've got time for a game, though, I'd rather be blasting Nazi's (or whatever floats your boat) than tinkering to get there. I still remember when I upgraded my video card to a Savage S4 and Half Life broke, requiring much tinkering, downloading, reconfiguring, rebooting, some more tweaking and finally a reboot to get back into the game. Then it isn't relaxing or fun; it's stopping me from the fun.

So a couple of bucks to GOG for their efforts to make thing run is a great investment, IMO. Plus it great to be able to get all the old titles again, long after the disks have been lost and the patches much harder to find...

I think it's also important that they're finding a market of Linux users who are willing to pay for games. One of the big complaints that modern publishers have about releasing their games on Linux is that they can't do the same things with DRM on Linux that they can with Windows, therefore no one will pay for their games and everyone will pirate instead. This is one of the obstacles Valve ran into with the Steam Box (which will run Linux) and they fought that perception by encouraging developers to release games as "Steam Play" that work on MacOS and Linux as well as Windows. Getting publishers to make their games Linux-compatible would mean that the PC gaming audience could finally run Linux without having to worry about having Windows for games.

One of the big complaints that modern publishers have about releasing their games on Linux is that they can't do the same things with DRM on Linux that they can with Windows, therefore no one will pay for their games and everyone will pirate instead.

Which just demonstrates how clueless and out of touch modern game publishers really are. DRM does not stop piracy on Windows or even slow it down. As a rule, Windows game DRM is cracked and DRM-free copies are widely available for download within hours of release, sometimes even before release.

There was a brief period (roughly 1993 to 1995) when copy protection worked to stop small-scale piracy: around the time when CD-ROM drives first became popular. If you could stuff a CD full of game files, you had a game that could not be economically pirated, because copying the CD required either a dedicated hard drive to store the data (hundreds to thousands of dollars), a hugely expensive CD recorder (tens of thousands of dollars), or a CD stamping facility (millions of dollars).

Small scale piracy, yes, but not large scale. The scene dudes at that time just compressed the audio assets using lossy compression and/or removed the videos entirely. They then wrote their own installers to decompress the assets. Maybe 5 games or more on a CD-R using this technique. I used to buy them in Romania for about 5-10 USD a piece from street vendors.

I should retract that. After finding my old forum post about this, I realized that it's been quite some time. I've since got new hardware, moved on to Windows 8, etc... and possibly they have updated their build too.

In any case, the freaking thing ran fine out of the box. I am absurdly happy right now!

I would much rather pay a reasonable amount for that rather than spend my gaming time tinkering; that's good value for me.

THIS. I legally own many DOS games. I have repurchased most of them on GOG.com for the very reason of NOT having to tinker with DosBox settings on a per game basis. No more scouring internet forums to figure out the right clock speeds, irq channels, etc. Just double-click, install and go. AND, in the event you do find a legitimate issue (as I did with Planescape Torment on large HDDs), they have support forums to report bugs and get them fixed.

The problem isn't just the ability to have the game run under Linux, but to set up the support system, set up the cross-distribution system, test each game, update the web sites, etc. DOSBOX is nice, but you can't just throw the binaries and a copy of dosbox and hope that the customer will know what to do. Just like most real products, once the product is done there's still a ton of work before it gets to a real customer.

That would be a much bigger install base, including users in developing countries that missed these games first time around and could use inexpensive ones from GOG. Most games could be controlled with a single row of soft keys at the bottom of the screen.

A virtual trackpad at the corner of a touch screen replicates a laptop trackpad just fine. I know of at least one Android device (Archos 43 Internet Tablet) that uses the trackpad abstraction when docked to an external display. And if that's not good enough, Android supports USB mice through an OTG cable.

Keyboard

I agree that some games are best with a keyboard because a flat sheet of glass provides no tactile feedback to line up the thumb over on-screen controls. But that's why Android supports USB ke

Games that use the mouse to point and click, such as any RTS, would translate more directly to touch input. I was referring to the control method that things like shmups and first-person shooters might use. For example, Metroid Prime Hunters and other first-person shooters for the Nintendo DS use the touch screen like a trackpad.

And using a bluetooth keyboard and USB mouse to play on your Android phone is a goofy idea. Who wants to do that? How many games in the android play market are set up that way?

I haven't done any sort of controlled sample, but I do know that the free version of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure handles a lot better with a Bluetooth keyboard than with the virtual gamepad. It's almost as if it were made for phones with slider keyboards.

These aren't baby games that can be run from a trackpad. Ok, some might be. But a lot of these were very serious games for their day that require fine mouse control and fast typing of keys. Sure you could probably do a point-and-click ScummVM game this way but I wouldn't want to attempt some of the GOG games I have this way (Thief, Gothic 2, BG2).

Basically most of these games being offered are offered as-is, except with Wine wrapper on top. That means that they can't modify the UI.

What looks inferior about fonts in modern X11? I haven't found any deficiencies in font rendering over the five and a half years that I've been using Ubuntu on my primary laptop. If it's the selection of fonts, then the same fonts you buy in Windows will work if you install them in GNU/Linux.

There are a few GoG games that have known Linux ports already, like Unreal Tournament 2004. Personally, I hope we see a modernized Alpha Centauri Linux port on GoG soon. The Icclus one doesn't seem to fare to well on modern systems.

Personally, I hope we see a modernized Alpha Centauri Linux port on GoG soon. The Icclus one doesn't seem to fare to well on modern systems.

Fully-patched AlphaC ain't exactly stable on Windows, either. It seems to crash more when some kinds of automation are used than others, which makes me suspect code that's probably similar (if not identical) between platforms.

One of the things about Civ V that quickly stuck me was how much less crash prone the Linux version is when compared to the Windows version. I had co-op players constantly going offline because their version was crashing all the time.

It's a great move, but we're not done yet. ID Software released (at one time) the source to older titles. Why can't GOG do/push for that too? Or are they?

The market here isn't about cost. It's about ease of use and simplicity. The code being available doesn't really change that. Somebody still has to package it up and that is exactly what they do. So why not get other companies to release the source and make the games all that much more valuable?

ID Software released (at one time) the source to older titles. Why can't GOG do/push for that too?

Even many companies that distribute their old games' programs as free software keep a tight leash on the "assets" (parts of the game other than the program). Case in point: Id Software cease-and-desisted Mozilla [slashdot.org] for making an Emscripten-powered JavaScript port of Doom available to the public. One reason that a publisher might decline to distribute an old program as free software is that doing so might encourage unlawful copying of the assets into games that compete with the publisher's own products.

Another reason is that third-party libraries often aren't free software. For example, the big three console makers are known for banning copylefted software on their platforms [slashdot.org]. The original source release of Doom was silent because Id Software had licensed a non-free audio library from a third party. (Source ports ended up replacing it with a shim around Allegro or SDL.) Id had to rewrite the Doom 3 engine to eliminate a patented "depth fail" shadow volume processing technique invented by William Bilodeau and Michael Songy of Creative Labs before its source could be released.

I'm not about to compromise my machine my running proprietary software on it.

Then how does it connect to the Internet? All cellular radios and many WLAN radios contain a microcontroller running non-free software. And how does it boot? Most commodity PCs ship with a proprietary implementation of EFI and not coreboot.

An interesting setup could be selling the original version (and assets) under license, while including an "updated binary" option, compiled to work on more recent OSes, and possibly with some minor improvements.

Id had to rewrite the Doom 3 engine to eliminate a patented "depth fail" shadow volume processing technique invented by William Bilodeau and Michael Songy of Creative Labs before its source could be released.

Those guys invented nothing. They were allowed to patent mathematics. Carmack's Reverse was independently discovered by John Carmack. He didn't know that the principles of his algorithm, the idea, had been patented. Besides he had an actual implementation of the thing. The version of z-fail in Creative's overly broadly worded patent isn't even a thing. Creative then used this as a leverage to blackmail id Software to include their EAX stuff into the game. This is a yet another good example why software pate

I'm not about to compromise my machine my running proprietary software on it. I don't care if it's Adobe Flash or GOG's titles.

It is usually not dangerous to run proprietary software on your computer. It's not that every proprietary developer is automatically some kind of monster who wants to screw with your computer and steal all your data. Just pick your software with good taste and you will be completely fine.

GoG only offers games that they get legally. They can't offer source unless the current IP holder gives them the source. All GoG is doing is taking an existing game off of CD or DVD, patch it up to be current sometimes, and and then packaging it up with a newer installer that includes Wine or sometimes dosbox or other support layer. And then sell it DRM free which is way ahead of how Steam is doing things.

You have to click each game to figure out if it has Linux support. It would be nice to let me filter (or make it obvious how to do so) or to just stick some icons by the boxes so I can see which platforms are supported in the list.

I wish they'd make those same filters available in our downloads section. As is, I just go to "Browse All Games", filter for Linux, and CTRL+F for Owned.
As a side note, http://www.enhancedsteam.com/ [enhancedsteam.com] has a plugin that adds a "Library" button to the Steam website, which allows you to sort your library by genre and category. For me, it only works in Chrome. Now if Steam would add this to the client library, I'd be happy.

One of the reasons these would be awesome on Linux:* PXE boot game environments

There are a surprising number of people who enjoy playing nostalgia games. I have a PXE server which - through some custom scripts - loads the appropriate fglrx/nvidia driver and the loads a custom GUI with various games. There are some native linux games but most are loaded through wine and do a lot of trickery involving COW filesystems and a remote DB to get a unique (legit) serial key loaded on individual machines for net-play